Donald M. McEligot

Idaho National Engineering Laboratory

Principal Thermal Scientist

Ph. D., Stanford University
M.S.E., University of Washington
B.E.M.E., Yale University

 dm6@inel.gov

Convective heat transfer in complex turbulent flows.

Description of Research

Professor McEligot's primary basic concern is understanding the behavior of the viscous layer in complex turbulent flows, since it usually provides the most significant uncertainty in convective resistances to heat, mass and momentum transfer to and from surfaces. Since 1990 he has been working with Prof. Brodkey to apply the pattern recognition program of Brodkey,Wallace and Eckelmann to the data of McEligot and Eckelmann in the Goettingen oil channel. These data provide the bases to examine the effects of strong favorable streamwise pressure-gradients on the coherent turbulent structures,in comparison to fully-developed flows. With Prof. J. Derek Jackson (U.Manchester) and Dr. T. Kunugi (JAERI) and their colleagues, he is comparing numerical predictions with advanced turbulence models for the viscous layer to the measurements of Shehata and McEligot for strongly-heated turbulent and laminarizing flows. At INEL with Keith G. Condie he has been measuring the convective heat transfer that occurs in the high (non-dimensional)frequency pulsating flow of vehicle exhaust systems, for application to the start-up transient when most exhaust emissions escape the catalytic converter. With Keith Condie and Dr. Carl M. Stoots at INEL he is involved in the development of a unique international facility being called a Matched-Index-of-Refraction flow system; it will have significantly greater spatial resolution and higher Reynolds numbers (for comparable models) than typical of other known operating flow systems utilizing refractive-index-matching techniques for optical measurements. The first test section will be 2 ft x 2 ft across with a pump designed for about 5400 gpm; experiments which can benefit from the facility's capabilities will include, but are not limited to,complex turbulent flows and complex geometries, two-phase particulate flow and flows in porous media. Initial operation is expected to occur in April 1996.

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Areas of Research

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Professional Experience and Organizations

Prior to attending graduate school, Professor McEligot served as a commissioned officer in the U. S. Navy and worked as an engineer for the General Electric Company. Since receiving his doctorate in thermoscience, he has been a member of the faculty of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University of Arizona, retiring early as Professor Emeritus. He taught the usual thermalscience courses and specialized in research on complex laminar, turbulent and laminarizing internal flows. However, his technical note on critical heat flux of dilute binary mixtures was a key to fundamental understanding of the phenomenon, although he did not understand that at the time. For the Naval Reserve he contributed a variety of technical work as an aeronautical engineering duty officer, retiring as a Captain. He and his colleagues conducted pioneering experiments and numerical analyses on effects of transport property variation in internal flow, low Reynolds number turbulent flow with heat transfer, transition of mixtures of polymer solutions and heat transfer to low-Prandtl-number gas mixtures. During this period he conducted sabbatical research projects at London's Imperial College of Science and Technology and Germany's Universitaet Karlsruhe and the Max Planck Institutfuer Stroemungsforschung, Goettingen. After retiring from UA, he led a successful hydrothermodynamics R & T department for Westinghouse Naval Systems Division in Newport, RI, until he accepted a call to join DoE's Idaho National Engineering Laboratory as a Principal Thermal Scientist.For a couple decades he was a consultant to solar energy, geothermal energy and nuclear rocket propulsion groups at Los Alamos National Laboratory.At INEL he now serves as Technical Leader of a Long Term Research Initiative in Experimental Thermal Science, with a small group concentrating on complex turbulent flows and two-phase particulate flows plus development of a versatile Matched-Index-of-Refraction flow system.

Professor McEligot was selected to be a Senior Fulbright Research Scholar to West Germany in 1982-3. He also surprisingly received a 1983 ASUA Outstanding Professor Award for Excellence in Teaching at the University of Arizona.During the fall of 1984, the Max Planck Gesellschaft brought him back as a Gastprofessor, again at MPI fuer Stroemungsforschung. In 1985 he was elected to Fellow grade in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers(ASME). With Y.-S. Kim and T. W. Eagar, he was given the 1992 Charles H.Jennings Memorial Award of the American Welding Society. For the ASME he served as an Associate Technical Editor of their Journal of Heat Transfer from 1986 to 1992 and has been semi-active on their Gas Turbine Heat Transfer committee for two decades. And his engineering studies of atmospheric thermalscience and mountain lee wave flow led to receipt of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale Gold badge for soaring with two Diamonds and a California altitude gain record for 15-meter sailplanes. For the winter of 1996 he has been invited by the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute for a three month visit to their Tokai Establishment as a "Distinguished Foreign Scientist." He recently was selected to be an INEEL Fellow, which is the highest designation for scientific expertise at the Idaho Laboratories.

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Most Recent Publications are

The turbulent Prandtl number in the near-wall region for low-Prandtl-number gas mixtures, Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer (1996) with M. F. Taylor,in press.

Natural convection between a vertical cylinder and a surrounding array,Nuclear Engr. Design 146, pp. 267-276 (1994) with a cast of thousands.

Perspective: Some research needs in convective heat transfer for industry,J. Fluids Engr. 116, pp. 398-404 (1994) with J. McEligot.

Turbulence structure in the viscous layer of converging flows, 9th Symp. Turbulent Shear Flows 1, pp.8-5-1 to 8-5-6 (1993) with H. Eckelmann.

Turbulent natural convection from a vertical cylinder to an array ofcooled tubes, J. Heat Transfer 115, pp. 928-937 (1993) with C. M. Stoots, W. A. Christenson, D. C. Mecham and W. G. Lussie.

Analyses of electrode heat transfer in Gas Metal Arc Welding, Welding J. 70, 20s-31s (1991) with Y.-S. Kim and T. W. Eagar.

Calculation of turbulent flow and heat transfer in channels with streamwise periodic flow, J. Turbomachinery 110, 405-411 (1988) with M. A. Habib and A. E. Attya.

Internal forced convection to mixtures, Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer 31,13-25 (1988) with M. F. Taylor an d K. E. Bauer.

Transient current capacities of bond wires in hybrid microcircuits, IEEETrans. Comp. Hybrids and Mfg. Tech. CHMT-9, 279-285 (1986) with M. Coxon and C. F. Kerschner.

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dm6@inel.gov for more information.